Blending the world of comics and live action isn’t a new idea. Funnily enough, we wrote about it in Disposable Media Issue 8 with a feature on Jonas Moore which combined a graphic novel with film featuring actor Colin Salmon. Years later, Polish devs Atomic Wolf hope Liberated will blend a motion comic and game successfully.
And it looks interesting. As a playable graphic novel, you’ll make choice-based story decisions within the hand-drawn digital comic sections. And then transition into fully playable action sequences moving from panel to panel with platforming, stealth and shooting.
Set in the near future, the plot is a sci-fi tale about an always-online society and the rise of authoritarianism, with a group of Liberated men and women against the new social order.
Not a unique premise, but it does offer different perspectives from several views and characters to hopefully be more than a simple tale of good versus evil. And it’ll be down to the quality of the writing and voice acting to see if players can be drawn into the plot.
Perhaps more importantly, it does look really good, which is key to getting gamers and comic book fans to both give it a try. We’re right where the two groups cross over in a Venn diagram, so it already has us intrigued.
So although there’s no release date or price set yet, it could be a title worth watching. The art style looks pretty good, and the action sequences seem fairly polished with a gameplay style that harks back through modern shadowy black and white platforms, to Another World or Prince of Persia.
It’s planned for a PC and Nintendo Switch release first, with the PS4 and Xbox One to follow.